01-03-2013 De Australische zomer 2012-2013 was recordwarm

Vooral de maand januari is zeer warm verlopen. Daarbij was er een langdurige hittegolf die eind december begon en doorging tot half januari. Zo werd  het in Sydney op 18 januari 45.8°C, een nieuw maximum record. Opvallend was dat de extreem warme zomer in een neutrale ENSO-fase plaatsvond terwijl de vorige hete zomers samen vielen met een El Niño.

Figure 1. The departure of temperature from average for Australia from 1910 - 2013 shows that summer temperatures have warmed by about 0.8°C (1.4°F.) Most of this warming has occurred since 1950. Image credit: Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Global warming expected to make the summer of 2012 - 2013 seem cool by late this century
According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, 

"the most significant thing about all of these extremes is they fit with a well established trend in Australia--it’s getting hotter, and record heat is happening more often. Six of Australia’s ten hottest summers on record have come in the last eleven years, meaning that very hot summers have been occurring at about five times the rate you would expect without a warming trend. In the last decade, record high temperatures have outnumbered record low temperatures in Australia by a ratio of about three to one. About a third of the all-time record high temperatures at the Bureau’s long-term stations have occurred since 2000…Australia has warmed by nearly a degree Celsius since 1910. This is consistent with warming observed in the global atmosphere and oceans. And it’s going to keep getting hotter. Over the next century, the world will likely warm by a further 2 to 5 degrees, depending on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. Under mid-to-high emissions scenarios, summers like this one will likely become average in 40 years time. By the end of the 21st century, the record summer of 2013 will likely sit at the very cooler end of normal

Bron. Wunderground.com